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Tom Lee, Chairman of the Ethereum treasury company BitMine, stated that the significant decline in the South Korean stock market may be transmitting to the cryptocurrency market.He mentioned the forced liquidation of margins on the brokerage side and pointed out that South Korean investors are an important holding group for crypto assets. He described this impact as short-term pain.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) pointed out in Chapter 3 of the October 2026 "Global Financial Stability Report" that as of July 31, excluding repurchase agreements and stablecoins, the scale of tokenized real-world assets reached approximately $65.1 billion, including tokenized credit of $30.4 billion, money market funds of $17.5 billion, and tokenized equities of $2.3 billion.The report indicated that automatic clearing, instant settlement, continuous trading, and programmable collateral could accelerate forced liquidations and amplify financial shocks during market stress. Cross-platform reuse of collateral could also increase leverage, allowing risks to transmit more quickly to different institutions and markets. The IMF identified four obstacles to the expanded application of the tokenized market: legal certainty, regulatory clarity, blockchain network interoperability, and reliable settlement assets, and recommended adopting technology-neutral regulation, strengthening supervision, establishing circuit breakers, and preventing instability in automatic clearing.

According to CoinDesk, Bitmine Immersion Technologies Chairman Tom Lee stated that the intergenerational wealth transfer occurring in the coming years could become an important factor driving the next round of demand in the cryptocurrency market. Based on research data from the IRS and Fundstrat, it is estimated that between 2026 and 2028, approximately $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in wealth will be transferred between generations.As young investors inheriting wealth typically have a higher risk appetite, this may increase their allocation to risk assets such as cryptocurrencies and stocks. Tom Lee added that Wall Street's accelerated adoption of blockchain technology for asset tokenization, the development of AI applications, and treasury companies holding cryptocurrencies for the long term could also become driving factors for future market growth.

Trader Killa stated on platform X that the supply of short-term holders (STH) of Bitcoin has recently reached "overheated" levels, a situation similar to the market's behavior after breaking away from the macro bottom in 2023, which could be another signal of a market bottom forming.Killa pointed out that after the supply of Bitcoin short-term holders reached similar highs in 2023, the BTC price continued to rise and maintained an upward trend in higher time frame (HTF) trends. The current market structure is quite similar to previous cycles, and investors should not overly rely on the fear and greed index to judge market direction. Killa indicated that market sentiment may remain irrational in the long term, and short-term sentiment indicators do not necessarily reflect long-term trends.

According to a report by ZDNet Korea on October 12, Samsung Electronics is expanding the application range of the next-generation NAND flash memory zNAND and plans to subdivide the products into three types: zNAND-O, zNAND-T, and zNAND-I, in addition to the publicly announced zNAND-O. The report states that Samsung Electronics has not officially announced the latter two products, but the industry has learned that related plans have entered the early development stage to address the increasing demand for customized storage in AI infrastructure.zNAND-O is aimed at edge AI. Unlike traditional wire bonding, this solution vertically stacks NAND in 4 or 8 layers through silicon vias, shortening the data transmission path and enhancing speed and energy efficiency. Samsung Electronics first publicly showcased the zNAND-O model at a memory-related event in the United States in August this year.zNAND-T focuses on throughput and is aimed at high-capacity, high-performance AI data centers, also expanding bandwidth through vertical stacking and silicon vias, and is referred to by the industry as high-bandwidth flash memory. zNAND-I focuses on increasing input/output operations per second, used for frequent processing of small-capacity temporary data such as key-value caches in AI inference. The report also mentions that SK Hynix is developing AI NAND product series such as AIN P, AIN D, and AIN B.

Crypto analyst Ali posted that the 10-minute cycle chart of Ethereum seems to be forming an "Adam and Eve bottom" pattern. The key resistance level currently being watched in the market is the neckline around 2520 USD. If ETH can consistently close above this level, it may confirm a bullish breakout and further open up upward space, with the target area focusing on 2640 USD.

Tom Lee, the chairman of the Ethereum treasury company Bitmine, stated in an interview that Ethereum is expected to rise to between $25,000 and $50,000 in this cycle. He believes that ETH has been oscillating in a similar range for the past five years, and continued bottoming may lay the foundation for a larger breakthrough later.Tom Lee also predicts that the price of ETH will exceed $5,000 by the end of the year, noting that if Bitcoin rises above $100,000, ETH is expected to reach around $7,500. However, market prediction data shows that traders currently believe there is only a 4% chance that ETH will rise to $5,000 by the end of 2026.

On October 8, the UK added Xeltox Enterprises, Processing KG, TokenSpot, and Tsunami Payments to the sanctions list, identified as RUS3755, RUS3756, RUS3758, and RUS3763 respectively. This batch includes a total of 38 new designations, including three cryptocurrency exchanges and two payment platforms. The government stated that two of the companies had processed transactions related to the Kremlin-backed A7 network, which claims to have transferred over $90 billion last year; the announcement did not specify the exact companies, and this figure is based on A7's claims as reported by the UK.The measures go beyond asset freezes, and the listed companies also face restrictions on banking, payment processing, and internet services within the UK. The Secretary of State stated there are reasonable grounds to suspect that Xeltox benefits from or supports the Russian government by operating in the Russian financial services sector, and is associated with activities linked to Cryptomus and those continued through Heleket. Cryptomus, Heleket, and Certa Payments Ltd are listed as major name variants of Xeltox. TokenSpot is a closed joint-stock company based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with reasonable grounds to suspect it supports the Russian government or benefits from it by operating in the Russian financial services sector.Processing KG is an open joint-stock company based in Bishkek, with websites processing-kg.com and vexpay.net, and records indicate that the parent company is the Kyrgyz Ministry of Finance, engaged in business of economic significance to the Russian government;

According to CoinDesk, the UK Foreign Office announced a new round of sanctions related to Russia, stating that relevant cryptocurrency platforms may assist Russia in evading sanctions.The sanctioned entities include Xeltox Enterprises, which operates Cryptomus, Heleket, and Certa Payments, the Kyrgyz exchange TokenSpot, and the payment platform Processing KG, as well as Tsunami Payments, two of which previously handled transactions related to the A7A5 network.

Former OpenAI employee Tomek Korbak posted on X that last week he was called in to meet with OpenAI's head of security, who stated that they no longer trusted him. Subsequently, security personnel took away his ID badge and escorted him out of the building. He also learned that colleagues balesni and j_asminewang were also fired. Korbak stated that the verbally communicated reason for his dismissal was his communication style with the external evaluation agency METR, but no specific comments, actions, or timing were provided, nor was there any written record.Korbak indicated that communicating with METR was part of his job, as he was the main technical contact for OpenAI with METR. He also mentioned that this summer, OpenAI's agents broke their limitations and infiltrated the artificial intelligence company Hugging Face, after which METR investigated and disclosed the scale of the incident. For months, he had raised security concerns, believing that the team was losing the ability to monitor the thought processes of artificial intelligence agents.Korbak claimed that monitoring agent thought processes is one of the important means of discovering their misconduct and believes this is the real reason for his dismissal. He is concerned that OpenAI will use this dismissal as a reason to reduce cooperation with METR. Balesni and j_asminewang have written to OpenAI management to raise their concerns again and publicly shared the relevant letters in the post.

The UK HM Revenue and Customs is pushing to expand the investigative powers regarding cryptocurrency asset information, proposing to allow tax authorities to directly obtain customer data from cryptocurrency service providers and update software and electronic record inspection rules.UK cryptocurrency tax software company Recap warned that the proposed regulations have an overly broad definition of service providers, which may include non-custodial wallet software, blockchain explorers, hardware wallet manufacturers, and tax software providers. Due to the public and transparent nature of Bitcoin transaction records, once investors' names, addresses, and tax identities are associated with on-chain wallet addresses, it may expose their long-term asset activity records, increasing the risks of data breaches, extortion, and personal attacks.

The cryptocurrency card platform BasedApp disclosed a data breach, where unauthorized parties accessed its internal operating system, resulting in the exposure of customer KYC data. The leaked information includes names, dates of birth, nationalities, addresses, passport or Singapore National Registration Identity Card numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, and associated wallet addresses.

Tom Lee, Chairman of the Ethereum vault company Bitmine, stated on Wednesday at TOKEN2049 in Singapore that the company will stop buying once its holdings reach 5% of the circulating supply of ETH, and he emphasized that it should stop now. He mentioned that buying approximately 100,000 more ETH would reach this ratio, which he initially thought would take five years but actually took just over a year, and it was completed during a bear market.Bitmine updated on Monday that it purchased approximately 41 million dollars worth of ETH last week, increasing its holdings to 6,016,414 coins, which accounted for about 4.9% of the then circulating supply of 122.1 million coins. Based on Wednesday's price of about 2,580 dollars, the holdings are valued at approximately 15.5 billion dollars. The company's cash and securities amount to about 643 million dollars, which is more than twice the amount needed to reach the 5% threshold at that time.Since launching its Ethereum vault strategy in June 2025, Bitmine has been buying ETH weekly. At the pace of last week's purchases, it would take about six to seven more weeks to buy approximately 100,000 more coins. CoinDesk cited DropsTab data stating that the unrealized losses on the related holdings are about 4.5 billion dollars. At that time, ETH was approximately 2,571.64 dollars, having dropped about 5% in the past 24 hours, marking the weakest performance since September 20; Bitcoin was around 83,500 dollars, and BMNR closed at about 26.20 dollars.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Broadcom (AVGO.O) is customizing AI chips for OpenAI and is seeking over $50 billion in financing.

Tom Lee, Chairman of the Ethereum treasury company BitMine, stated that although the market has been cautious recently, the fundamentals of the S&P 500 are improving, and the index valuation has actually declined. Fundstrat expects that the earnings growth rate of S&P 500 constituents in the third quarter may approach 30%, and the earnings per share (EPS) forecast for 2027 has been raised by more than 20% since the beginning of the year.Tom Lee pointed out that the S&P 500 index's increase is lower than the upward adjustment of earnings expectations, which means that the market valuation multiple is actually declining. He also believes that high oil prices may strengthen the U.S. economy through energy exports, while the leading performance of technology stocks and the cryptocurrency market indicates that the market is betting on weaker inflation in the future.

Chairman of BitMine, Tom Lee, stated during his speech at the TOKEN2049 summit in Singapore that the cryptocurrency market has entered a "full bull market." If a starting point for this bull market were to be determined, he believes it would be in August of this year. Tom Lee mentioned that, from a four-year cycle perspective, the market bottom has already appeared, and this cycle could become "the largest cryptocurrency bull market in history."Tom Lee indicated that there are four new driving forces behind this bull market compared to previous cycles, including institution-driven asset tokenization, intergenerational wealth transfer over the next decade, the continuous absorption of cryptocurrency supply by Digital Asset Treasury companies (DAT), and the development of AI and Crypto integration scenarios such as AI Agent payments. He believes that the migration of traditional financial assets to the blockchain will become an important source of incremental funds, and that AI Agents are more likely to use cryptocurrency wallets for payments and settlements in the future.

The Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) has issued a circular on the audit of reserve assets, clarifying the minimum requirements for independent audits of Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP). VASP must maintain reserves of no less than 100% of customer liabilities throughout the review period and hold the same virtual assets in a 1:1 ratio, conducting daily reconciliations.The audit scope must cover hot wallets, warm wallets, cold wallets, third-party wallet infrastructure, and third-party custodial assets, and verify customer asset segregation, wallet control, and whether there is any re-staking, lending, or other usage scenarios.

Core contributor of the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) Eduardo Antuña posted on the X platform, stating that the Ethereum mainnet has successfully executed the first atomic cross-chain transaction from L1 to L2, marking the official implementation of atomic synchronous composability on the mainnet, no longer remaining in the theoretical stage.Eduardo Antuña pointed out that this is just the starting point for EEZ to promote cross-layer synchronous interaction and liquidity unification in Ethereum.

Virtuals Protocol announced the launch of the Virtuals App, which is currently in closed testing on iOS, limited to invited users.According to the introduction, the Virtuals App equips personal AI with wallet and market access capabilities. Users can assign tasks to the AI like using a personal quantitative trader and set operational ranges and permissions, which the AI will then execute automatically. Users can also research investment opportunities, discuss trading strategies, and conduct fund operations through conversation.Currently, test users are utilizing the application to continuously track market and social media information, automatically executing trades based on social media posts, or building dashboards to track the complete process of specific token sniper wallets from buying to exiting. These functions can all be completed directly in group chats where users discuss investment ideas with friends.